London mayoral elections
Election for the Mayor of London
The London mayoral election for the office of mayor of London takes place every four years. The first election was held in May 2000, and six subsequent elections have taken place. The latest mayoral election took place in 2024.
Electoral system
The electoral system used for London mayor elections is the supplementary vote method, except in 2024 when the first-past-the-post system was substituted by the Elections Act 2022, which was passed by the Conservative government. In 2026, the Labour government restored the supplementary vote.
In elections held using the supplementary vote system, voters express a first and second choice of candidate. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of first choice votes, all but the two leading candidates are eliminated, and the votes of those eliminated are redistributed according to their second choice votes to determine the winner. (In the first-past-the-post system, voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice and the candidate who received the most votes won.)
As with most elected posts in the United Kingdom, a candidate must pay a deposit to run in the election. The current deposit a candidate must pay is £10,000, which is returned if the candidate wins at least 5% of the votes cast (first preference votes before 2022). The winner is elected for a fixed term of four years; there are no restrictions on the number of terms a mayor may serve.
The public source identifies “London mayoral elections” as election for the Mayor of London. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around London, mayoral and elections.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “London mayoral elections”, the useful work is to connect “election for the Mayor of London” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6671135. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2024, 2022 and 2026.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “London mayoral elections”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow London mayoral elections primary sources, London mayoral elections archive and London research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “London mayoral elections”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “London mayoral elections” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.